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Hatcher, Pujols get past 'misunderstanding'

Hatcher, Pujols get past 'misunderstanding'

Albert Pujols

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ANAHEIM -- Angels first baseman Albert Pujols and hitting coach Mickey Hatcher spoke Tuesday afternoon, one day after the slugger took exception to Hatcher reportedly relaying details about his involvement in a closed-door hitters' meeting, and the two seemed to quickly move past the issue.

Hatcher hesitates to even call it that.

"Albert and me already talked," Hatcher told MLB.com. "We're not going to get into that. It was a misunderstanding with the guy who wrote the article. We talked about it, no big deal, and he does not want me talking to the press because they're blowing everything out of proportion. We're fine, as a team."

On Monday afternoon, Hatcher seemed to pass along a harmless anecdote to a couple of reporters about a pregame meeting, saying Pujols stood up and, in essence, told his teammates he had been through struggles before and they shouldn't worry about him.

Asked postgame in a scrum of reporters about speaking up in that meeting, Pujols responded:

"Mickey should never tell you guys what we talk about in a meeting," Pujols, who was batting .217 and was homerless through his first 92 at-bats, said Monday night. "I think that's something that's private. That needs to stay with the team. No disrespect to Mickey, but this is our ballclub. This is stuff that needs to be private, and that's something that I'm going to tell him. He should never talk to the media about the things that are going on in the meetings. No disrespect to him, but I think that's the way the ballclub should be. Stuff behind doors stays behind doors, not in the media."

Hatcher -- who has come under scrutiny with the offense's struggles -- said he approached Pujols himself the following afternoon, to basically tell him he never provided specific details about the meeting.

"I know that he doesn't want to be talked about," Hatcher said. "I said, 'Hey, there's some stuff in there that was just positive, and that was it.' And we left it at that. And it's not worth talking about."

At that moment, Pujols walked by, and Hatcher quipped, "Right, Albert?" Then the two walked down the stairs and onto the field together. Shortly thereafter, Angels manager Mike Scioscia simply said that "there's nothing to resolve" between the two.